Marketers have a very difficult job in today’s multi-channel marketplace. First, they must assemble an annual marketing plan consisting of unique and appealing marketing campaigns from their bank of products, promotional ploys, channels, and price points into a seasonal marketing plan. Then, given the marketing plan, they must decide which customers should receive which marketing campaign. And, all of this must be accomplished while maximizing the return on advertising and meeting short and long term financial objectives for revenue, profit, and customer growth.

Why is this so challenging?

The marketers job has become more complex in recent years due to the BIG DATA and BIG MATH trends.

The BIG DATA trend is the explosion of data now available on both prospective and existing customers. In the multi-channel world, you can now obtain web visit and email activity data to supplement the legacy purchase and promotion data. It all adds up to vast amounts of data – valuable but in a raw, unusable form for marketing.

The BIG MATH trend is the rising importance of sophisticated data analysis techniques to assemble BIG DATA into something marketers can use. Tools such as predictive modeling and optimization are becoming more essential to bridge the BIG DATA and marketing gap.

Coupled with these trends is the increasing number of planned marketing touch points. Monthly print campaigns have morphed into almost daily email efforts. Everyone is flooding the marketplace with marketing material competing for the attention of consumers or businesses. Making circulation decisions has never been more challenging.

The fundamental circulation problem has not changed.

Contact customers so that you get the most out your marketing budget. Match contacts to customers such that there is minimal waste and maximum return. Attain the desired financial targets for revenue, profit, and customer growth with the most efficient and effective contact strategies.

The methods to solve the problem are changing.

The best place to start is to establish a marketing analytical platform as a place to store, summarize, and analyze customer data which is scalable, flexible, and affordable. The platform should perform the simplest data manipulations, but also house complex analytical workflows delivering circulation recommendations.

About Randy Erdahl
Randy is an analytic marketing champion and is Clario’s Executive Vice President, Optimization Solutions and co-founder. As the executive leader of optimization solutions, he provides vision and direction for Clario Stream Solution development, as well technical leadership to sales, marketing and direct client interaction.